I read an article in a very popular women's magazine the other day which featured their favorite fitness tips.
many of these magazines contain very fluffy advice, but tens of thousands of women still seek out that advice, daily.
I observed the images which featured models with long and slender legs and arms, and naturally thin waists. The models were demonstrating things like yoga poses to "tighten and tone" and one celebrity trainer was cited as saying she advises getting firm and toned arms by using "no more than three pound weights."
Um....rly?
I believe (yeaaah from experience) that if you're overweight and looking for help, reading these magazines may make you harder on yourself because following this advice is going to bring about results so incredibly slowly that you're likely to completely lose interest in your workouts and opt to spend your evening watching "The Biggest Loser" whilst digging into your Twinkie ration but motivated to smash your workout - tomorrow.
Yep, you'll do it tomorrow.
But tomorrow comes and there's another birthday at the office and you didn't bring lunch so pizza and cake is your "only" option and "The Voice" is all new tonight and you cannot miss that.
Maybe you'll begin on Monday. Fresh week. Fresh start.
But in the meantime, you just fill yourself up and feel heavier....and heavier....and heavier.
You "need" these magazines for motivation....but they only make you feel worse about yourself and worse for what you're not doing. How is that motivating?
Stop reading things that are not immediately beneficial to your health - physical/emotional/mental health - stop! If it's making you feel even slightly inadequate, leave it alone!! That includes your social media news feeds.
Many of the women you are seeing with these tall, rail thin slender features who model these poses most likely have not battled the issue of being overweight. It's not their fault - they were hired to represent concepts that are selling magazines. Their frames usually just arent built for the kind of weight you and I have trudged around. It's ok. Take everything you read lightly and form your own opinions.
We are all built differently. Do not make the mistake of comparing yourself to anyone, let alone someone with a body type completely different from yours and assume that youre going to obtain her kickass physique in the advertised 12 weeks by lifting feather light weights and doing pilates. It just doesnt happen that way, regardless of if it's printed in a magazine or appears online...
If your workouts are making you yawn...or are making you ancy and anxious, then you are in danger of quitting.
Regardless of how you workout, there must be a PUSH in order to transcend the barriers of your mind and body. Like blowing a feather from your palms, you fill your lungs so deeply until you cannot take another breath because there's no more room and it just hurts. You release everything you held inside with a pop from your diaphragm and watch the feather soar...with your breath carrying it only as far as the effort you put into filling your own lungs.
Those barriers of your mind not finite. They do not exist and the moment you find that place beyond your mind is the exact moment you become addicted. If you will dig deep, you will go far.
So sweat, and allow yourself to disappear from the physical realm. Become lost and free within the space your molecules occupy; be moved by the sound (or silence) between your ears and drift with the rhythmic motion of your physical self expanding and contracting.
Just work dammit WORK!!
You may not have all the answers...but you have some. So work the hell out of what you do know and remain open to letting go of all you think you are in an effort to find the person you truly wish to be.
many of these magazines contain very fluffy advice, but tens of thousands of women still seek out that advice, daily.
I observed the images which featured models with long and slender legs and arms, and naturally thin waists. The models were demonstrating things like yoga poses to "tighten and tone" and one celebrity trainer was cited as saying she advises getting firm and toned arms by using "no more than three pound weights."
Um....rly?
I believe (yeaaah from experience) that if you're overweight and looking for help, reading these magazines may make you harder on yourself because following this advice is going to bring about results so incredibly slowly that you're likely to completely lose interest in your workouts and opt to spend your evening watching "The Biggest Loser" whilst digging into your Twinkie ration but motivated to smash your workout - tomorrow.
Yep, you'll do it tomorrow.
But tomorrow comes and there's another birthday at the office and you didn't bring lunch so pizza and cake is your "only" option and "The Voice" is all new tonight and you cannot miss that.
Maybe you'll begin on Monday. Fresh week. Fresh start.
But in the meantime, you just fill yourself up and feel heavier....and heavier....and heavier.
You "need" these magazines for motivation....but they only make you feel worse about yourself and worse for what you're not doing. How is that motivating?
Stop reading things that are not immediately beneficial to your health - physical/emotional/mental health - stop! If it's making you feel even slightly inadequate, leave it alone!! That includes your social media news feeds.
Many of the women you are seeing with these tall, rail thin slender features who model these poses most likely have not battled the issue of being overweight. It's not their fault - they were hired to represent concepts that are selling magazines. Their frames usually just arent built for the kind of weight you and I have trudged around. It's ok. Take everything you read lightly and form your own opinions.
We are all built differently. Do not make the mistake of comparing yourself to anyone, let alone someone with a body type completely different from yours and assume that youre going to obtain her kickass physique in the advertised 12 weeks by lifting feather light weights and doing pilates. It just doesnt happen that way, regardless of if it's printed in a magazine or appears online...
If your workouts are making you yawn...or are making you ancy and anxious, then you are in danger of quitting.
Regardless of how you workout, there must be a PUSH in order to transcend the barriers of your mind and body. Like blowing a feather from your palms, you fill your lungs so deeply until you cannot take another breath because there's no more room and it just hurts. You release everything you held inside with a pop from your diaphragm and watch the feather soar...with your breath carrying it only as far as the effort you put into filling your own lungs.
Those barriers of your mind not finite. They do not exist and the moment you find that place beyond your mind is the exact moment you become addicted. If you will dig deep, you will go far.
So sweat, and allow yourself to disappear from the physical realm. Become lost and free within the space your molecules occupy; be moved by the sound (or silence) between your ears and drift with the rhythmic motion of your physical self expanding and contracting.
Just work dammit WORK!!
You may not have all the answers...but you have some. So work the hell out of what you do know and remain open to letting go of all you think you are in an effort to find the person you truly wish to be.